Lake Titicaca

So the journey continued to Puno in order to visit Lake Titicaca and the floating islands, which were amazing. We headed out to the islands in a small boat with our guide and a boat predominately filled with Chileans.

We had an entire small island to ourselves, there are approximately 75 islands in total and you could see about 50 of them from our island. We had a run down on the goings on the island. Basically everything is tied to the reeds that grow in the lake. They are used to build the islands, the houses, the boats, the lookout towers, and are the principal food stuff for the local people. They drink the water from the lake, fish in the lake, they are pretty much self sufficient but reliant on Lake Titicaca for their existence.

They showed us in miniature how the islands are built and that they are anchored in place so they do not move unless the people want them to, in which case they just pull up the anchor and float to where ever it is they want to go. The local women and children sang songs for us and then we were able to take on of the reed boats to another central island before we headed back to Puno.

After crossing the boarder to Bolivia we spent a couple of days in Copacabana in order to visit the Island of the Sun. We did a day trip that involved possibly the longest of boat rides ever to and from the island. I am serious that I think we could have swum faster. The island wasn’t really what we were expecting, so we got a 3 hour walk in the sun with pleasant views of Lake Titicaca, which we had to keep reminding ourselves was a lake and not an ocean.